Lake Champlain United - Forums

After plowing, and sanding the driveway and waiting for the roads to improve we decided to make the trip after all and launched from converse at 9am on Thursday morning. Ramp had a few inches of fresh snow, but no ice underneath.

Dave and Ken jumped in today to fill out the crew.

We checked for bait in VT and after not seeing anything worth targeting we motored to split to
See what was there. 47 deg water, good bait balls sometimes up To 80’fow and predators above the mix.

We setup 4 riggers and 2 slide divers. Mixed in a dbsmelt or 2 for the season. We setup one side with Smeltrite and the other with “fat sause”’smelt attractant. The end of day summary was both worked equally well.

The 1st fish was a laker on sausage gravy milkshake from 45 down. The 2nd was a salmon on another sausage gravy milkshake. (We had 3 of 10 spoons out in that flavor)
Sausage gravy and milkshake probably caught 80% of our fish today. So way the hands down winner.

Due to the late start and a 3 course BBQ lineup planned we had to start the grill by 11am and it never cooled off until after 2pm… we started with spiced shrimp kabobs, followed by Chinese marinated spare ribs. (That I petrified on one side due to fish action:( finished up with some bbqed spareribs that were finished to perfection with the grill way down low… those hit the spot!

Back to the lake… we never saw sign of another boat on the lake all day. Had the whole visible lake to ourselves… I dropped a couple salmon at the back of the boat toward the end of the day:( It was nice to see a healthily mix of them in with the lakers in this trip.

By 3pm we had had enough and we trolled back to Vt, catching fish there also. Some of the most interesting bait we saw in the graph today was right down the center of the lake…Ended up with 17 on the counter and more of them being salmon since I have seen since August..

All systems go for a good frostbite season. It is just getting started and with a little luck we won’t stop.

Fish on!!

Sounds/looks like a great trip Matt! I keep contemplating going out, but without canvas I'm a bit hesitant. I wish I was set up as well as you are, since I have lots of time off and a freezer full of venison. Tight lines and Happy Holidays.

Nice Job Matt!

way to go matt!!!!

Good deal Matt - the number of salmon is encouraging - we had a fair to good trip south, but no salmon - very aggressive lakers shallow - guess I'll be trying a little farther north - middle/end of week looks promising if the wind lays down - tight lines - Ed

You definitely get it done! Your posts don't disappoint. Good numbers. And I Love that SIMRAD!
I will be out there towards end of week. Hope to see some of you all out there. I'll be on 68.

Regarding that picture of the sonar with the 163 depth, we call those fish "Naaaaah!" Fish. You can see them swim up to the lures, look at them, and go Naaaaah! and swim back down.

Detritus wrote: ↑Thu Dec 16, 2021 9:07 am Regarding that picture of the sonar with the 163 depth, we call those fish "Naaaaah!" Fish. You can see them swim up to the lures, look at them, and go Naaaaah! and swim back down.

Yes! That is very frustrating.. But it is still valuable data.... If it keeps happening, it tells me to try changing the presentation... IE: troll direction, speed, spoon type, spoon color, add smell, change to stick bait, or dodger and fly, etc, etc....... We deployed a dodger and fly after seeing that on the graph... Although it didn't help

The clouds of bait on the screen drive me nuts.... It was the best we saw that day....